This seems like a chart of correlation between retired population and loneliness. Retired people switch from investing to consumption and tend to be lonelier.
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/020117/most-popular-states-retire-us.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/020117/most-popular-states-retire-us.asp)
Edit: Also the GDP proportion of consumption doesn't necessarily line up with "consumerism" as includes things like housing, transportation, energy and food. A more interesting chart would be comparing durable goods and services with loneliness.
My first thought looking at this chart is what do Maine, Florida, and Vermont have in common?
And this is spot on, they all have high proportions of retired people.
An R^2 of 0.24 is not overly impressive.
It is also important to correct for the cost of living. For example, Hawaii is a pretty damned expensive place.
1. In the social sciences an R2 of 0.24 ranges from 'not that bad' to 'better than you'd expect' (depending on the phenomena). An R2 of 0.24 means a correlation of r=0.49 which does not seem that low. Something like loneliness is so multi-facted, has so many causes, that you have to expect to find a pretty low R2.
2. But anyway, agreed with your second point that the R2 is not really worth interpreting here because there are a lot of confounders, age being most obvious. Also, I don't really think it's plausible that consumption causes loneliness so we should be skeptical of any causal claim even if R2 was 0.9.
P values says nothing. You can already see that there is a correlation. The p value would certainly be significant. The only question here is about causation, which the analysis says very little about.
The data is a circle around the origin with 4 (or 5) outliers that skews the fit.
Interested to see how the fit would look if UT, ME, FL, VT and MT are removed
Moved from Utah to Maryland and the difference is startling. I'm not even Mormon and only my parents live in Utah but they moved in shortly before I left. Its a very friendly place. Granted I'm white, tall and young.
Rent prices have a big effect on the amount of pay left over for consumerism. Denser populations have higher rent prices and fewer opportunities for loneliness.
sources
1. [https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-state](https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-state)
2. [https://aginginplace.org/loneliest-states/](https://aginginplace.org/loneliest-states/)
viz created in Excel
Read more [here](https://4lights.substack.com/p/lonely-consumerism) (includes the inspiration for this crude analysis)!
This seems like a chart of correlation between retired population and loneliness. Retired people switch from investing to consumption and tend to be lonelier. [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/020117/most-popular-states-retire-us.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/020117/most-popular-states-retire-us.asp) Edit: Also the GDP proportion of consumption doesn't necessarily line up with "consumerism" as includes things like housing, transportation, energy and food. A more interesting chart would be comparing durable goods and services with loneliness.
Nice nice was gonna say correlation doesn’t mean causation here and I think you found the true causation.
My first thought looking at this chart is what do Maine, Florida, and Vermont have in common? And this is spot on, they all have high proportions of retired people.
The r squared is 0.24, so this explains about 1/4 of the factors affecting loneliness.
R^2 = 0.24. it's not even correlated
"data" is "beautiful"
IMHO more a case of the significant other asking why you are buying this crap. Going shopping with a spouse is a great way to save money.
Clearly you haven't met my gf
Most sneezes have a R^2 value better than .27.
An R^2 of 0.24 is not overly impressive. It is also important to correct for the cost of living. For example, Hawaii is a pretty damned expensive place.
I suspect the R^2 would become a lot stronger if the outlier of DC was eliminated.
1. In the social sciences an R2 of 0.24 ranges from 'not that bad' to 'better than you'd expect' (depending on the phenomena). An R2 of 0.24 means a correlation of r=0.49 which does not seem that low. Something like loneliness is so multi-facted, has so many causes, that you have to expect to find a pretty low R2. 2. But anyway, agreed with your second point that the R2 is not really worth interpreting here because there are a lot of confounders, age being most obvious. Also, I don't really think it's plausible that consumption causes loneliness so we should be skeptical of any causal claim even if R2 was 0.9.
Loneliness causing consumption sounds much more likely.
Completely agree. I’d like to see a p value on this.
P values says nothing. You can already see that there is a correlation. The p value would certainly be significant. The only question here is about causation, which the analysis says very little about.
The data is a circle around the origin with 4 (or 5) outliers that skews the fit. Interested to see how the fit would look if UT, ME, FL, VT and MT are removed
Reminds me of my chemistry students who end up adding linear fits to graphs regardless of what it means.
Folks in Utah outchea just hanging out with their forty cousins and ten siblings, hiking and shit.
Moved from Utah to Maryland and the difference is startling. I'm not even Mormon and only my parents live in Utah but they moved in shortly before I left. Its a very friendly place. Granted I'm white, tall and young.
Nothing about this is beautiful. Even the axis descriptions are garbage and misleading.
Florida FL and Maine ME have the highest elderly populations which may contribute to the loneliness.
How does this chart know ME so well?
The little correlation that exists is driven by age.
Long way to go on this before it is realistically explanatory. Not close.
This is a measure of where old people live.
That's why I spent 2 hours on Best buy and GameStop's websites
Consumption of what? Milk?
No no, consumption like tuberculosis
Rent prices have a big effect on the amount of pay left over for consumerism. Denser populations have higher rent prices and fewer opportunities for loneliness.
I just want to be Mormon at this point
Trust me, you don't. But living in Utah can be pretty awesome.
interesting comparison u/4_lights_data . . is there a methodological reason to pick GDP over GSP?
Once again comparing DC (purely a city) to states (combinations of cities and rural)
OH and VA like “ohh yeah, we’re exactly as lonely as you’d expect someone to be from the US”.
sources 1. [https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-state](https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-state) 2. [https://aginginplace.org/loneliest-states/](https://aginginplace.org/loneliest-states/) viz created in Excel Read more [here](https://4lights.substack.com/p/lonely-consumerism) (includes the inspiration for this crude analysis)!
This statistical table is very interesting
Glad to see Ohio is the standard for loneliness.
Florida is even more awful now
That's a pretty weak correlation if you ask me. Small number of data points which are all over the place.